Monthly Archives: July 2011

That’s Beyond the Broken Bridge – the latest print edition of the PigeonBike continuum – in a nutshell. Or a namedrop. Rhyming off some of the well-known writers featured in this issue should give one a sense of what lies within. That is, you will get some strong and edgey lyricism via free verse bent to accentuate the subject matter.Some poems interact with the “broken bridge” theme directly.Others leverage the image into a more abstract sense of loss or disruption or mystery. All hang together well enough to create a gently haunting atmosphere.

And there’s a bunch more names as well – some familiar, some new, but all with a similar vibe and style to deepen the read.

That’s what you get in the latest issue of Matchbook, a poetry review bound, literally, in old matchbooks. Our copy came in one from the “Vista Restaurant” in Phoenix, Arizona, with a 1960s flavour to it.

Offset printed with letterpressed images, Matchbook is a well-produced little curiosity. And the poetry inside isn’t bad either. Obviously, in a format like this, brevity rules. “Cerise” by Kate Lebo packs a well-crafted wallop in a dozen words, and “Our Talk” by Greg Weiss is a thick snack of imagery. Some of the pieces are excerpts from longer poems that, not surprisingly, feel as though they are missing some meat. But that trade-off is a given in a format experiment where there is but a 2 inch by 1.5 inch canvas with which to work.

An on-line journal purporting to focus on the “renegade art form” of the chapbook through “insightful reviews, provocative essays, and engaging interviews” certainly sound like a good way to fill a “critical gap”. Certainly sounds good for lovers of the bastard offspring of the publishing industry, at any rate. And that’s the mission that The Chapbook Review promises to fill.

Or promised to. Unfortunately, the Review is now the on-line version of a ghost town. The architecture is still there, however, the only recent and archived articles in evidence are the equivalent of an overgrowth of wild flora. That is, the content consists of brief, anonymous, semi-literate reviews of iPads, Kindles and electronic cigarettes; things any self-respecting chapbook aficionado would have no truck with.

Not sure what happened to the promise of the site, but it seem(ed)s like a good idea. Perhaps someone will reclaim the property and build it up again…